This means that the taxpayer will pay for the vast majority of the Commonwealth Games in 2014.

Having watched the following video, and after some years of wondering just how much a country benefits, I've decided it doesn't. We're going to be more in debt.

Since the likes of the Olympics and Commonwealth Games admitted professionals, both competitions have lost any interest for me. Allowing professional athletes into the arena paved the way for international sponsors. Perhaps parts of Glasgow will be rebuilt to benefit Glaswegians, but, like the rest of Scotland, they'll be paying for it for many years to come.

Surely there is a much cheaper, and certainly more effective, way of encouraging our young to enjoy sport.

And in 2012 we in England will all suffer. I am not from London. In my little part of the world there will be zero events and therefore the alleged benefits to the local economy will be £0.00. But, as a taxpayer, I have already shelled out god knows how much to allow Lord Coe et al to get richer beyond my wildest dreams. Also for 'TEAM GB' to win medals. I like sport. As a middle-aged man I still go to the gym regularly and stopped playing competitive sport only when I couldnt keep up with the young. But I have no interest in the Olympics.

When I was a lassie Joe (aye I know that's some years ago) amateurs were in the likes of the Olympics. Dick McTaggart won the gold in boxing. He'd lived down the road from me when I was a bairn and his family were anything but well off. They were a close, caring one though.

When sport becomes 'professional', when corporate interest is attracted, the big money follows. That kills the sport. Football, snooker, golf, once the cash pours in it degenerates into X factor on steroids. How many fans actually play? Maybe many, but how many could play professional? Probably none - not nowadays. The Olympics were fashioned to develop supreme beings of endurance and strength. Their uses were to be put as examples of what an army should aspire to - fighting forces. That it was competetive is a flaw in the human psyche - everyone laps it up.

Sport can bring people together, but let it be on the common, the green, the canteen snooker room. It should be bonding communities as it once did, when England's team were full time workers and back on shift Monday.

I guess you can tell I don't have a sporting bone in my body! But I had a whale of a time at an indoor Kart track with fellow employees years ago. Sport didn't really enter - that was pure fun! That's the problem, sport is no fun.

I think the idea of Glasgow getting "done" is hard to believe. When do they ever? Glasgow is the city that will benefit directly from visitors for the Games. It has also benefited bigtime from the massive work going on in the east end which the City Council has ignored for decades and allowed to fall into a shocking state in every way. Its the Scottish taxpayer who is getting done, not Glasgow.

Past a basic level I agree that sport isn't fun anymore Derek. In far too many sports money matters most. The best trainers, the best bikes, the best of everything is bought. Makes a fortune for the sports industry but gives short-lived pleasure to the majority.